


the north of my heart's compass

by seraf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bisexuality, Butch/Butch, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/F, Gender Dysphoria, Introspection, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Melanie King, Original Character(s), Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Trans Female Character, Trans Georgie Barker, Trichotillomania, frank discussions of poverty, nonbinary lesbian melanie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-28 01:21:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: melanie king has fought for everything her entire life, it seems. georgie baker is not afraid of anything.and this doesn't make them more butch. it can make it harder, sometimes, to try and love in every way you can, in every way you are, when you worry that the very nature of the different pieces of you add up to the wrong sort of whole.a character exploration of wtgfs as a butch4butch couple.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Georgie Barker & Melanie King, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, georgie barker/original female character
Comments: 27
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ' i am fixing whatever i can, whenever i can, and i laugh, and play, and let the spaces in my masculinity show, just like you, just like every butch. i get all slicked up in a suit and tie and I pick up my date, also in a suit and tie, and we just open the door if we get to it first and we take turns paying, and it doesn’t make me less butch. it doesn’t make me less anything. it doesn’t mean that i don’t think femmes are swell, i surely do, but they are not my salvation when i travel, they are not the north of my heart’s compass. that’s butches for me, and i will always go a little weak when i see someone scared and hardened and delighted and ashamed and proud – proud like me. ' 
> 
> \- s. bear bergman, butch is a noun.

tasha is the first person she tells, albeit in a stilted kind of way. they’ve been exes for awhile now, but they’re still good friends. tasha is one of the few people who had called herself georgie’s friend while she still hadn’t come out of the hazy fugue after alex’s death. she had been there for the slow process of becoming a person again that georgie had had to go through. at first she had just been looking for solidarity, but when georgie had recovered enough to have a personality again, they found that theirs were compatible.

she’s grateful to tasha, for it. for the multiple attempts at friendship even on the days georgie thought of as blank ones. for never once blinking or slipping up even when the fog settled in georgie’s limbs and made her too worn out to shave. for helping georgie cling to some facets of her identity - what it _was_ and what it _could_ be, where everyone else seemed to be focused on the old georgie. who was, for all intents and purposes, in georgie’s mind, dead. she doesn’t quite mourn it. people change. it’s sort of an inevitable thing. it’s good to have someone who doesn’t look at her with grief in their eyes for the friend or daughter they wish she still was.

it’s not something they ever voice, of course. but georgie isn’t stupid.

it’s the little things that helped her back into personhood. lying with her head pillowed by tasha’s thighs, not minding how bony they are, and listening to her relentlessly mock some of the others in her creative writing class. starting estradiol again, after having gone off it in her pre-recovery period. taking care of the admiral and cap’n. ( funnily enough, it was when cap’n died that . . . helped her, in a strange sort of way. made her realize that she could still feel _something,_ because in that moment, she felt grief. ) being called handsome by tasha as her charcoal-smudged fingertips smoothed down the lapels of georgie’s jacket. getting a new tattoo, even if it’s a stupid one. ( _especially_ the stupid ones, tasha had said, when georgie came back to their shared apartment with a little cartoon cat in black ink on her ankle. those are the best kind. )

and tasha had helped. had been the catalyst for or present for so many of those little things. so tasha is the first person she tells.

‘ i don’t know . . . why it happened. or who was responsible. you remember back at the end of third year, when i was super obsessed with all those conspiracy theories? ‘

tasha gives her a smile, a little teasing. ‘ honey, you’re _still_ obsessed with conspiracy theories. ‘

georgie couldn’t help but purse her lips in a contained smile at that. guilty as charged, she supposes. she makes a mental note to herself to tell tasha later about how she’s been slowly coming up with this podcast idea. ‘ _more_ obsessed with conspiracy theories. anyway . . . that was why. ‘

tasha studies her face for a long moment. it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking, which . . . usually isn’t the case. she’s always been a bit too expressive. when she feels, she really puts her body into it. finally, though, she reaches across the table, brushing georgie’s knuckles with her own, freckled hand reaching for her for just a fleeting second. ‘ i believe you, ‘ she says, simply, finally. ‘ it’s not the kind of thing you would make up. ‘

it’s true. georgie doesn’t know if she could be so creative. not in this kind of way.

she looks down at her mug, thumb brushing the rim of it as she considers her next words. how to say the part that comes next. tasha understands the worst of it now, of course. what happened itself. maybe that’s enough, to explain away those months of time where she just . . . _wasn’t._ a simple reaction to trauma, supernatural or not.

but it _isn’t_ the whole truth. georgie looks at the ikea table beneath their hands that she doesn’t totally remember putting together. her side of the table has a good handful of coffeestain rings across the wood. tasha had always tried to get her to break the bad habit of just setting glasses or mugs down, sliding her coasters with a baleful look, but georgie had never really gotten into the stride of it. just not really one of the things she could bring herself to care about, she guesses.

( you learn to pick your battles. _she_ learned to pick her battles. when caring is an effort, you decide which of the little things it’s alright not worrying about. which to let go. to her, everything she cares about is a transaction, in a way. she has to pick and choose what she cares about just like she has to pinch pennies around when rent is due. if she puts too much into one sinking ship or spends a little too frivolously . . . it feels like it’ll drain her altogether. )

‘ it. ‘ well. tasha said she believes her already, right? might as well go forwards. georgie cups her hands around her mug, dull fingernail tapping at the ceramic of her mug. it’s _hard,_ to put this kind of thing into words. but she’s always found a way to be to the point. pausing for another breath, shifting her ankles under the table as she feels the admiral weave around her chair legs as though sensing her distress, she pushes right on through. ‘ it . . . _changed_ me, a little. took something, i guess. ate it, maybe, i don’t know. i can’t . . . i don’t feel afraid anymore. at all. i used to think that . . . you know, like everything else, it would just be one of the feelings that came back one by one, but, ah . . . time just kept going forwards, and i kind of realized it was never coming back, you know? it just took my fear. ‘

she says it as plainly as she can. before losing her fear, she had thought that anxiety and worry were pretty synonymous with fear. now she knows the difference. now she knows what it’s like when one exists without the other. there’s no _fear_ in her gut, no flinch reaction, no terror in the consequences. but that doesn’t stop her brain from turning itself over with a hundred thousand thoughts about what could be.

tasha considers this for a long moment. she doesn’t look . . . _surprised,_ really. just like she’s mulling it over. georgie supposes that if she’s willing to believe in walking corpses that whisper the will to live out of people, said corpse taking away her fear really isn’t _so_ much a leap of faith to take from there. ‘ so you’re not afraid of anything? ‘

georgie shrugs. ‘ that’s about the gist of it, yeah. ‘

tasha sighs, almost wistfully, resting her chin on her fist, other hand still holding her own mug of coffee with far too much sugar added to it, eyes flicking back to georgie’s face as her half-glossed lips ( the other half having come off on the mug rim ) curve into a little half smile. ‘ you really are a femme’s dream, then, huh? ‘

she’s trying to cheer georgie up. trying to look on the bright side of it.

georgie thinks about the way that everything she does has to feel so carefully weighted, these days. trying to compensate for fear. for the possibility that the fog could crash back over her like a tidal wave. it’s a strange realization, sometimes, the things that you lose when you lose that animal instinct. it’s like suddenly going colorblind, and just realizing how many things used to be red, if only for their absence. you think you remember what red was like, which things _used_ to be red, but . . . memory is ephemeral.

she thinks about the other things it’s taken from her. how she’d realized with a tinge of sadness that adrenaline didn’t kick in for roller coasters or jumpscares any more. how there hadn’t been any butterflies in her stomach or lump in her throat when she had finally gotten herself together enough to ask tasha out for the first time, because the thrill of _fear_ wasn’t there, mixed in with the love.

you lose orange and purple, too, when red gets taken from you.

she thinks about tasha’s question. takes a second too long to respond, maybe, but she does. in her own time.

_you really are a femme’s dream, then, huh?_ is this butch, then? fearlessness, in the most literal sense of the term?

she takes another sip of her coffee. ‘ i guess so, yeah. but you knew that already, right? ‘ and tasha laughs, bright and genuine.

it’s not the coffee that leaves a tiny bitter taste in her throat.


	2. Chapter 2

she’s starting to be able to feel the floor of her crappy apartment through the toe of one of her socks, having worn them so threadbare that if she steps wrong in her faded trainers, her pinky toe slips out of the hole along the side-seam to brush the inside of her shoe like a moth stirring from inside its cocoon. but pacing is the only way to ensure that she doesn’t fucking _throw_ something, clenching her phone in her hand as though working it like a stress ball, pacing in figure-eights to maximize the tiny space she has.

it’s fine. when they go out to shoot the next episode of ghost hunt uk ( because andy wanted night footage, and he was _right,_ it did always get better ratings like that, with the sounds of the country at night unfamiliar to most people watching from the city or the suburbs, lending an inherent kind of spooky factor ) she can just double-layer them so her feet don’t freeze in some g-dforsaken abandoned churchyard. she’ll just have to match up pairs that have holes in different places.

problem-solving. it’s a skill you’re kind of forced to develop, on a budget. the phrase _thinking on your feet_ comes to mind, and it almost makes her toss her phone across the room.

her phone buzzes in her hand, and she almost snaps it open to call whoever it is a cunt, but on the _off chance_ it’s toni or andy or pete, and not the dickhead at the latest job interview ( who had been all too happy to approve her resume online and through the phone, only to _waste her time_ by calling her in for an interview where he took one look at her buzz-cut hair and her eyebrows that she’d bandaged over her fingernails for more than a _week_ to keep from picking out, and politely informed her that they couldn’t accept her application at this time, as though he’d even _bothered_ to give her a cursory interview ) she manages to sound . . . if not cheery, then at least not sullen, either.

‘ hey. melanie king speaking. ‘

and she’s glad for it, at least, when the voice on the other end is warm, though a little muffled by the bad reception she knows he gets up there. ‘ hey there, little moth. your teeth doing alright? ‘

it’s her dad’s gentle way of asking about her anger. when she was younger, she used to grind her teeth so badly she’d worn down her canines to flat points altogether. it’s his way of saying, just to her, _loosen up your jaw. make sure you aren’t directing it all inside too much, mels._ and . . . he’s right. she takes a deep breath, and exhales, forces the tension to roll out of her shoulders in a way that always feels a little . . . unnatural. like she’s just more at ease being on edge.

but her dad’s voice helps, if only for a minute.

‘ hi, dad, ‘ she says, and her voice is softer. quieter. like this is the kind of conversation she doesn’t want to be heard through the cardboard-pulp walls of her flat. some things are just too intimate to be heard by devin the self declared _entrepreneur_ who tried to ask her out to drinks when she came to the door in her vintage dykes on bikes t-shirt and krystal, she of the four secret cats against the landlord’s rules. ‘ teeth are fine, i swear. ‘

_it’s under control. you know me, dad._ she leans against the sad little strip of kitchen counter that hosts the dishwasher, gently tapping her elbow with her opposite finger, phone pressed close to the side of her face. thank g-d for toni being able to patch her charger back together. she just didn’t have the _time_ to go out to the shops to buy a new one, and ordering it online would be at least a few days, plus the shipping was _outrageous._ ‘ how’ve you and mum been? ‘

her dad kept her mother’s ashes. he had offered them to melanie, but she had refused. felt like it cheapened her memory, somehow, to keep the small vase in the series of depressing flats she skipped her way between that she never spent much time in anyway. sometimes, her dad talks about her mum as though she’s still there. melanie doesn’t know if it’s just him playing on the joke the two of them have spooled out between them, or if it’s his dementia getting to him again, but . . . either way, he sounds happy. she can’t begrudge him that.

‘ she’s doing fine, mels. we’re both worried about you, you know. ‘ her dad pauses, just long enough for that to sink into sincerity. for it to come off as genuine. to let her know that he cares without turning it into something guilty. then he continues - ‘ i’m looking forwards to your next video, melmoth. nurse bryant finally let us use the big tv to play your last one. the one with the haunted museum? miss mary was _fuming,_ you know. none of _her_ kids do anything so cool. ‘

there’s a warmth to his voice that makes her stomach ache, but not in an all-bad kind of way. she wishes he were here. that when he adds on, ‘ i’m so proud of you, mels, ‘ he was standing right next to her, and she could elbow him fondly, and he’d pretend to double over, winded by her strength. a part of her wants to, tiredly, ask _proud of what?_ of the off-again-on-again jobs she has to take whenever she can? of a stupid ghost hunting show?

but another part of her, a younger part, refuses to think like that. her younger self sticks out her lower lip and insists _if dad’s proud of it, it has to be something good._

it’s something to hold onto.

she sweeps her foot across the kitchen’s linoleum floor to send a lone stale cheerio skittering under the dishwasher, so she can slide down to sit on the floor. ‘ yeah, it’s just about a wrap on the latest episode. i’ll make sure to send you all the bonus content, too, dad. we’ve got this whole extra bit on this dead kid that we couldn’t work into the main episode that we’re only releasing to patrons. it’s a shame, too - pete got some _great_ soundscaping down for it. i bet you’ll love it. ‘

‘ weeding the patchy audio, is he? ‘ her dad jokes, and she groans at him, theatrically enough that she can hear his laugh through the crackle of bad connection. soundscaping, landscaping. ugh.

‘ not even a good joke, dad. ‘

‘ what can i say? i’m getting slow in my old age. ‘ her face softens a little, toe tracing lines in the linoleum.

‘ nah, i don’t think that’s it. i think you came out of the womb senile. ‘

her dad laughs again. they have a similar laugh, her mom used to say, and it’s a good one to hear. she hasn’t had a lot of cause to laugh lately. she’s going to have fully developed stress lines by the time she’s thirty, she thinks gloomily, nails idly picking at the hair of her forearm as her shoulder cradles her phone close to her ear still. ‘ touché. i’d try a ‘like father, like daughter’ joke here, but you’ve always been too smart for me, little moth. ‘ she smiles. the thin crack across the screen of her phone digs into her cheek muscles as they contract. g-d, she’ll have to see if she can make some time to visit him soon. and if she can beg a ride from toni up his way.

he’s sighing. ‘ i gotta leave you, mel. it’s just about time for group. stay strong for me, okay? ‘

‘ you too, dad. don’t let the hospital food kill you just yet. ‘

and with that, she’s tucking her phone back into her pocket. though she takes another minute to just sit on the ground, legs splayed out unceremoniously in front of her, head tipping back against the dishwasher for a moment, eyes shutting in quiet exhaustion. the anger is pulled out of her for now, but sometimes, she can’t help but wonder if that’s worse. if it’s anger that drives her forwards. she scrunches her feet again, feeling the cool air through one of the new holes her pacing is beginning to wear in the bottoms of them, and runs a hand over her close-cropped hair, letting out another long breath before she finally stands up.

_take care of your teeth, melanie,_ she reminds herself, rolling the tensionache out of her shoulders. _pretty sure braces are a turn-off for most girls._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hihiiii so this chapter's a bit less explicitly focused on melanie as butch? in that i don't think the word is used outright, but it is relevant to where this fic is going overall, i swear. 
> 
> i wanna like... w melanie and georgie in this i do kinda wanna show like. a contrast in different presentations and relationships to being butch? like for melanie she likes having her buzzcut, but georgie's hair is long without that detracting from her version of masculinity, melanie is nb/transmasc and georgie is transfem, melanie is a lesbian and georgie is bi, melanie's story + butchness is a little more tied to her poverty and her control of her anger at a world that sometimes feels like it doesnt Want to have a place for her + butch identity as armor, whereas georgie's is tied back to the rediscovery of self after trauma and identity as healing. 
> 
> so having this chapter be more focused on melanie's like . . . the frustrations she has with poverty or mundane life where it /isn't/ fair, objectively, but there's nothing she can do about it, will be relevant later. 
> 
> as always, please give feedback! i want to make sure this is something i'm handling well. constructive criticism is welcome, as is positivity if i have managed smt well!

**Author's Note:**

> hey everyone! this is a little bit of a passion project as well. i'm doing my very best to cover the topic respectfully, and i've been checking in with sensitivity readers and so on from the moment i came up with the concept to make sure i was doing it justice. this was inspired by a few things - stone butch blues and butch is a noun, for one, but ron/gerrydelano talking about butch georgie as well, and griffin/irradiatedsnakes drawing nonbinary melanie with top surgery, as well as this transmasc 4 transfem pride flag i saw here - https://transmikecrew.tumblr.com/post/638455331770564608
> 
> i'm not butch, or wlw. so i hope to cover this as respectfully as possible, with love to all my wlw sisters out there. thank you for reading this.


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